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Don’t take it from us – hear what our customers have to say

Slow storage infrastructure causes all sorts of problems – productivity plummets, designers and editors are irritable. Rockstar helps everyone work more efficiently than ever before. Some of the finest companies from the the world of broadcasting, advertising and post production have entrusted Rockstar with their most valuable asset; their data. Here is what they have to say.

Testimonials

Peter Onyskiw, Technical Director, Echo Studios

ECHO is a leading design and production house working in luxury retail and exhibitions within the UK, Europe and beyond. Echo began life as an artworking studio in London in 1994. Following demand from a growing client base they began printing, rapidly expanding in to a fully fledged mounting and print factory. As a natural extension, Echo began to offer an installation service, quickly growing to a full National coverage of professional graphics and retail site installers.

ECHO needed to upgrade its storage infrastructure and were looking for more than just new servers. The requirement was to protect all digital assets against a worst-case scenario. The company knew that a Cloud based solution might be required, but at the same time there were concerns about security, and also the speed at which they could bounce back from a total disaster.

“We were introduced to Rockstar and their Private Cloud solution, and we liked the idea of being in complete control of where our data goes, and also the knowledge that we can have it back immediately.

We ordered a total of four 16TB Rockstar Ants. Two of them are now located here at ECHO Studios, two of them we’ve put into the Rockstar data centre in Belfast. We are very successfully using the two 16tb Ants on our local network, both of them mirrored to their twins in the data centre.

One of the Ants we use for our day-to-day work in a very busy design studio. The other Ant serves as our asset library, covering a range of blue chip clients. Both Ants have integrated well into our environment.

We perform daily backups of both of them to our private cloud, which allows me to sleep well at night.

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Greg Darby, Founder and CEO, Yellowmoon

Yellowmoon is one of Ireland’s leading film and television postproduction outfits. Based in Holywood, Co. Down the company works on the vast majority of high-end film and television drama that has shot in Northern Ireland. From Game of Thrones to The Fall, from Universal Studios to Fox, every major production has made Yellowmoon its home for post. With such high caliber clients and with a constant influx of rushes – the storage requirement had to be robust, expandable but above all – it had to be dependable. Yellowmoon chose Rockstar as its preferred platform of choice. With over 30 suites ranging from AVID to Protools, the company demanded a solution that would be both reliable, ultra fast and affordable. Rockstar supplied Yellowmoon with its most powerful Main Act solution, featuring 64TB of storage capacity and platform independent collaboration.

Greg Darby, CEO and founder: ‘When Rockstar approached us we took an instant liking to their no-nonsense approach to business – It was obvious that the product was good on paper, but it was really when we put the technology to the test we realised how good the package and the service really were. Rockstar went far beyond the call of duty to ensure we got the optimal performance – not only from their box but also from our own internal infrastructure. We have since invested in a second and a third Rockstar system and we are intent on basing all future storage requirements on this platform.’

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Rowan de Pomerai, Senior Technical Manager, ITV Studios

The world famous broadcaster really doesn’t need further introduction, but for good measure – here goes: ITV is an integrated producer broadcaster, operating the largest commercial family of channels in the UK. In addition to traditional broadcasting on its channels, ITV delivers content on demand through numerous platforms, both directly and via the ITV Player. Through ITV Studios the company produces content for both its own channels and third parties in the UK and increasingly overseas. The ITV distribution business sells finished programmes and formats worldwide.

‘We required a cost-effective shared storage solution to allow our production teams and editors to work from the same platform at high speeds.

Rockstar’s Main Act solution has provided us with robust technology, expandability and a straight-forward user interface making it good value for money and a simple-to-deploy product. We have recently implemented a second Rockstar system and are pleased with both the products and the support we receive..’

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James Dillon, Managing Director, Dillon Productions

Dublin-based Dillon Productions has been in business for 20 years as a TV production company, and began specialising in video-rich e-learning content 6 years ago.

“As well as making broadcast TV and corporate video productions, we had a large client base in the training sector. When the bandwidth became accessible we decided to move into the e-learning space,” explains James Dillon, Managing director, Dillon Productions. “Thanks to our years of video experience, our product looks very different from anything else available – it’s professional and very engaging.” The company now has around 38,000 users, with clients including the Irish national providers of gas, water, telecoms and electricity.

Dillon Productions has grown steadily over the last four years, and has increased its facilities from four to six edit suites in the last year “We now have six people collaborating on content, using tools like Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, Cinema 4D, After Effects and other applications,” says James.

Dillon purchased their Rockstar server from Dublin based systems integrator Eurotek, which alerted the company to the subsidised finance offer from Rockstar.

James comments, “We don’t have anything else on finance, but since we are going through a growth period it made sense not to squeeze our cashflow. The finance deal that was offered was very competitive. . ”

“We needed a server to cope with the large amount of data and network traffic, so we researched the market and came across Rockstar. It seemed perfect for our needs and we decided to invest in it. I have been very impressed with both the Rockstar server and the service received.“

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Stephen Murnane, Digital Manager, Piranha Bar

Piranha Bar is a fully fledged production studio built around a full service Post Facility.

Their growing roster of directors and studio of animators, 3D genii, flame artists and production elves all share a passion for effective storytelling. Embracing the invigorating changes in cross-platform content production, Piranha Bar has blown open the traditional assembly line production model, in favour of a collective approach where every production solution is explored and delivered in-house, under one elegant Georgian studio roof.

Whatever the project demands, from inception to execution, Piranha Bar encourages a collaborative approach to the creative process. As the world rapidly shifts focus from one medium to another and across multiple communication platforms, they explore the kinds of concepts and executional techniques that result in true originality.

While the Production Studio blazes its own trail, Piranha Bar’s extensive Post Production Facility offers their agency and broadcast production company clients all the high-end editing, motion graphics, VFX, grade and compositing capabilities they’ve known and trusted for over ten years.

“We were looking for a new server to replace our central graphics server. It needed to satisfy a number of key requirements. It needed to be well built, easily configurable, have high bandwidth and be compact. Having looked at the Rockstar product it satisfied these requirements and more. It comes with 10Gig connectivity as standard along with multiple 1gig connections which allowed us to connect at the best possible speeds to our backbone. Within 20 mins of receiving the unit we were up and running and were pleasantly surprised at how quiet the unit was, given the number of drives. ( We went for the 64TB unit configured with RAID6).

I have no hesitation in recommending you take a look at it for your requirements.”

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High-speed collaboration

The creative industry deals in big files, so when things are slow it takes a long time for designers and editors to get anything done. Rockstar gives you the speed you need, and we’re talking up to 1,500 MB/s – 50% more than a fibre channel solution.

This means there’s no more transferring large files from machine to machine or waiting for them from the cloud. Rockstar lets you work as if the file is saved on your desktop, but knowing your work is completely backed up. And it works seamlessly with all systems, so you’re not disturbed by time-intensive installation or support processes.

The bottom line: with Rockstar creatives are instantly more productive.

Full power and security, wherever you work

Rockstar allows you to work from anywhere without sacrificing the quality of the experience.

Our iPad app, Rockstar Data, makes it easy to work on the go. All your work is automatically and wirelessly backed up to Rockstar so you can create without worrying about your device’s storage constraints.

And since work can be accessed from the cloud, you can collaborate from any location.